Baron, worldwide provider of critical weather intelligence, announces that PrISUm, the Iowa State University Solar Car Team, successfully completed the 2017 Bridgestone World Solar Challenge (BWSC). Baron was a proud gold corporate partner of the PrISUm team, which raced its car “Penumbra” across the Australian outback. Baron donated a custom-built Baron Threat Net package, a real-time weather intelligence software package designed to provide global forecasts with a focus on sunlight. Baron also provided expert meteorological advice on weather-related strategy scenarios.

Baron was one of a group of corporate partners that made the project possible by donating funds, goods, or services needed to build and race the vehicle. PrISUm contacted Baron after recognizing the need for accurate weather data for its race strategy and planning.

“It was a pleasure to work with the PrISUm team on this exciting and visionary project,” said Glenn Denny, President, Enterprise Solutions, for Baron Services, Inc. “The partnership was a great learning experience, and we are thrilled to have helped the team with critical weather data needed to prepare for the race and conduct their test drives.”

The team had previously relied on free online sources for weather data but found they did not have the quality and depth of information as Baron Threat Net, nor did other sources provide a centralized location for the data in one easy to use interface. “Of the information that is not collected beforehand about the race, the weather has the largest impact,” said Dylan M. Neal, Penumbra’s project director. “Knowing the weather can allow you to plan a more optimal race strategy and let you get the optimum sunlight. The main issue with solar car racing is that we care about the exact position of clouds in a way that the average weather service can’t provide. Having advanced software like Baron Threat Net really helped us with this challenge.”

The PrISUm team was the first team to compete in the World Solar Challenge from Iowa State University. Penumbra was the only 4-passenger cruiser and solar car from the United States, traveling 230 miles per day at speeds between 40-60 mph. The car did not break down once during the entire race.

The team is already looking to the future, recently announcing that Penumbra will race in the American Solar Challenge 2018, redesigned, revamped, and ready to win and make an even bigger statement. To meet this goal, the team is already hard at work transferring knowledge gained over its time in Australia and through Penumbra’s development, especially making changes to the battery design to increase its power. Penumbra recently crossed another finish line, making it safely home from the land down under to Ames, Iowa in late November.